By Terese Jonsson
At a recent event organised by the Women’s and Gender Studies research cluster at the University of Portsmouth, titled ‘Feminisms, anti-racism, social justice: Theories and strategies for our times’, the topic of feminism’s co-option by capitalist and racist forces was much discussed. The co-option of feminist language and politics by a variety of nefarious forces is a recurrent topic of feminist concern, with some of the most common culprits identified as capitalism/neoliberalism, racism, imperialism. For example, Nancy Fraser’s and Angela McRobbie’s analysis of the neoliberal co-option of feminist language and politics in the service of the market are two well-known and influential critiques. In relation to imperialism, Western states’ cynical use of ‘women’s rights’ as justification for military invasion has been much discussed. Similarly, far-right groups’ uptake of a language of ‘women’s rights’ to demonise Muslim and migrant men is has been described as ‘theft of feminist rhetoric’ in the service of racism.
As the language of ‘theft’ implies, within these framings, a ‘genuine’ feminism is often positioned as something of an innocent victim (with the exception of Fraser’s argument, which does place some blame on feminists themselves for losing their socialist focus – although note Brenna Bhandar and Denise Ferreira da Silva’s critique of Fraser’s erasure of the work of Black and Third World feminists). These framings often suggest there is some more authentic feminism which remains entirely outside of discourses of imperialist capitalism. This erases the fact that, as highlighted in a recently published conversation between Inderpal Grewal and Srila Roy (2017), that feminist theory is not itself innocent of processes of co-option. Grewal points out that feminism has never been ‘pure’ or autonomous in the sense often evoked when its co-option is lamented. Feminist politics have a long history of entanglement with imperialism, racism, capitalism, states and transnational organisations, thus in Grewal’s view, ‘the problem we face now is how to address neoliberalism as a problem without producing that pure, prior feminist subject’ (Roy, 2017: 2).
To think further through Grewal’s proposition in the context of feminism in Britain, it is particularly important to consider the role of racism in the complexities surrounding both feminism’s co-option and its co-opting tendencies. David Goldberg’s concept of ‘racial neoliberalism’ (2009) – usefully explored by Nisha Kapoor (2013) in the British context – is helpful here. Racial neoliberalism refers to a process of de-politicisation of race from the 1980s onwards. Kapoor notes that while the publication of the MacPherson Report in 1999 marked a historically significant moment in naming institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police, the definition of institutional racism ‘stemmed from a post-1945 western definition of racism that completely dissolved links between liberalism, colonialism and racism’ (Kapoor, 2013: 1034). Subsequently, the rise of the ‘community cohesion’ agenda and anti-terror legislation alongside the re-structuring of equalities law, has involved, in Kapoor’s words, ‘a drastic escalation of the muting of race, which makes it near impossible to name, to identify and thus to redress racisms’ (1029).
In other words, ‘racial neoliberalism’ in the British context promotes an ahistorical and decontextualized understanding of racial difference which silences the fundamental link between present-day racisms and Britain’s history of colonialism and transatlantic slave trading. It reduces racism to individual acts of prejudice and denies its continued structural basis. This a-historicism produces a similar narrative to the neoliberal ‘post-feminist’ discourse which suggests gender equality has been achieved and thus that feminism is no longer needed. But while there is a strong feminist critique of neoliberal co-option, a form of racial neoliberalism has also been insidiously incorporated into white-centred feminist theorising. As my research into dominant narratives within white-centred feminist theory suggests, racism within feminism is often described as something which may have happened in the past, but which has now been dealt with, and thus does no longer require attention. However, as black British feminists have consistently been arguing from the 1970s to the present day – from Hazel Carby’s classic ‘White woman listen!’ in The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain (1982) to Reni Eddo-Lodge’s chapter on feminism in her just published book Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (2017) – racism within feminism is unfortunately not a problem which has been resolved.
One way in which this problem is repeatedly evaded within white-centred feminist theory is through the marginalisation of Black British feminism. As Gail Lewis has spoken about, when white feminist academics do engage with race, they are more likely to cite American feminists of colour than British ones, thereby distancing themselves from the racial structure of the British state, and challenges to their stakes in this structure. The legacy of Britain’s colonial history on gender relations (significantly centred in Black British feminist analysis) is frequently ignored by white feminists, and an innocent feminist politics is presumed to exist which is free of racism and imperialism.
Our current times demonstrate clearly the need for an understanding of Britain’s imperial legacy (as Nadine El-Enany evocatively phrases it, Brexit has powerfully exposed Britain’s ‘nostalgia for Empire’), in feminist politics as much as in national politics. Thus within feminist struggles against neoliberalism’s co-option, racial neoliberalism within white-centred feminist theory and politics must equally be challenged.
Terese Jonsson is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth and is currently writing a book for Pluto Press on racism and whiteness in British feminism.